


Little Pink Houses

by ChElFi



Series: Daffodils [11]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, In Case You Haven't Had Enough Fluff, More Fluff, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-01
Updated: 2016-01-01
Packaged: 2018-05-10 18:42:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5596690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChElFi/pseuds/ChElFi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pink is not Maria's favorite color. And studies have actually shown that she's not the only "girl" who thinks that way. ;) A little bit of fluff, post-AOU. PG-13 for married stuff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Pink Houses

**Author's Note:**

> Happy New Year! Hope yours is grand. 
> 
> So this is just a brief one-shot set post-AOU that explains a little how the house came to be.

“It’s pink,” Maria said.

Her voice was as emotionless as her face and Steve rolled his eyes.

“There’s this stuff called ‘paint,’” he told her as he opened the door of the car.

He walked around to the other side but Maria was still in the car when he reached the sidewalk. He put his hands on his hips and shook his head. Maria wouldn’t budge, so he opened her door.

“Are we going to have to do this the old-fashioned way?” he asked.

Maria shrugged.

“Might as well, since we’ve travelled back to the 50’s,” she glared at him.

But there was no fire behind it and Steve laughed. He reached for her hand and tugged until she acquiesced and stepped out of the car.

“Should I carry you across the threshold?” he asked, his voice husky as he leaned into her.

She raised one unimpressed eyebrow at him and Steve laughed again.

“Alright, I’ll settle for holding your hand,” he told her and took her hand in his.

She wasn’t smiling yet but Steve was up to the challenge.

He opened the gate in the white picket fence that ran around the front yard and Maria mumbled something about how she supposed the pickets might make good weapons if she needed one.

Maria's reaction was close to what he'd predicted when he'd seen the house online and those suspicions were reinforced when he'd been shown around by the Realtor.

The lack of privacy at the new Avengers facility had become an issue quickly after they'd moved in. Steve had thought it was difficult when they lived in two separate places, but living near each other was not as ideal as he'd hoped. There was too much of a chance of being found out, and, Steve realized after Ultron, it might be safer for Maria if they were not. So, Maria might take issue with almost everything to do with the house, but Steve knew she wanted a place they could get away from the prying eyes of the team, and the all too knowing Vision, and Wanda, though the woman had promised she'd stay out of people's heads unless necessary.

As they headed up the walk, they crunched fall leaves beneath their feet and Steve watched her out of the corner of his eye. He could see in her eyes that she was pleased, even if her face still didn’t show it. It was one of the secrets of Maria that only he knew, that she loved the sound of crunching fall leaves as she walked along. Steve involuntarily squeezed her hand at that thought and she shook her head again.

“I sense a trap,” she said.

Steve took the steps to the porch as he pulled the keys from his pocket.

“No, trap,” he said. “It’s just a house.”

“Yes,” she was still at the foot of the steps. “And it’s pink.”

“Ugh,” he said and made a face at her. “Will you just get inside?”

“Is it better inside?” she asked.

“Paint, Maria,” he said as she finally walked past him over the threshold.

Steve followed her inside and closed the door behind them. He walked into the living room, his sneakers squeaking on the wood floor, and turned on the thermostat. It wasn’t freezing yet but the October air was chilled and the house could stand to be a few degrees warmer. Maria didn’t mind the cold, but Steve hated it.

She was looking around the entry alcove. It was empty, as was most of the rest of the house, so all she had to look at was the walls.

“Well, at least this room’s not pink,” she said.

“The whole house isn’t pink, Maria,” he assured her.

“It was built in the 50’s,” she told him. “The kitchen and bath are sure to be colorful.”

“Paint,” he repeated.

“You can’t paint tile,” she said.

“Would you just come inside and look around?” he sighed in mock exasperation.

“See, there’s a fireplace here,” he pointed out as they walked through the living room.

“This is one of the bedrooms,” he said.

“It’s mauve,” she said. “With a flower border.”

“At least it’s not pink,” he reminded her.

“It’s close enough,” she said.

“Ha ha,” he said then showed her the other rooms.

“It’s mint green,” she said when she looked inside the small bathroom. “And how are you planning to shower in that tiny little bath?”

“We can put in a taller showerhead,” he told her.

“We?” she asked.

He shook his head and sighed humorously.

“Will you just come see the kitchen?” he asked.

The kitchen was more to her liking. Steve had known it would be, which was one of the reasons he'd bought it. It had yellow tile but the cabinets and fixtures were modern and white. She hummed her approval as she looked around.

He waited until she glanced at him in question then he smiled and took her hand again and led her to the door.

At one time it had opened onto a porch, but a decade earlier the owner had enclosed it and turned it into a greenhouse. The heat from the room was warmer than the rest of the house.

Steve had an unabashed grin on his face as he watched Maria’s eyes land on the only pot on the shelves.

She shook her head and sighed again.

“I’d never have given you those stupid daffodils if I’d thought it would become a thing,” she said.

He stepped behind her and pressed his chest to her back as he wrapped his arms around her.

“Well, _you_ started it by giving them to me not once, but twice,” he said.

She leaned back into him and hummed as she relaxed in his embrace.

“And that second time,” he said. “That led to our first kiss.”

He leaned down and pulled her earlobe into his mouth and nipped then laved it.

She huffed out a laugh.

“You have a one track mind, Captain,” she said.

Later that night they lay in front of the fire Steve had started in the fireplace, Maria’s head laid on Steve’s chest as she stared into the flames.

“So, we’ve christened every room,” she said.

“Yeah, but next time we should try it with furniture,” he joked.

She lifted herself to look at him.

“You didn’t have to do this,” she said.

“Yeah, I did,” he told her.

Then he pulled her back on top of him and kissed her as chastely as he could with her in that position.

“This is ours,” he said “Our home, together. It doesn’t mean we have to tell people yet, I know it’s still too early.”

She kissed him in return then laid her head back on his chest.

“Maybe I like it being private,” she said. “It’s nice not having people all up in our business all the time.”

Steve laughed.

“Yeah, I can just imagine Tony,” he said. “He’d never let us alone.”

Maria laughed.

Then Steve felt her still, as if she’d had a bad thought. He waited until she was ready to tell him.

“How do you think Bucky will react?” she asked quietly.

They hadn’t talked about Bucky much since that August night when she’d finally told Steve, with the help of copious amounts of alcohol, how she really felt about him looking for Bucky.

He wrapped his arms tightly around her and kissed the top of her head.

“I don’t know,” he said, then he took a deep breath.

“I’ve been thinking about what he’ll be like,” he told her. “I know I can’t expect it to be exactly the same. Even if he was the same, which I doubt, I’ve changed.

“I’m not the same person I was when I went down in the ice,” he said.

“And yet, here we are, in a 1950s house,” Maria paused dramatically. “That’s pink.”

“Oh, would you just stop,” Steve laughed with her.

“What color should we change it to?” he asked.

“We?” she asked again.

“OK, me,” he said.

“In your spare time you’ve been learning to paint houses?” she asked. “I guess that might come in handy, if this saving the world business doesn’t work out for you.”

Steve sighed.

“That year with Stark was a bad influence on you,” he said. “The two of you together made both of you slightly unbearable.”

“Baby,” she quipped.

“See what I mean?” he laughed.

“Blue is good,” she said.

“Blue? For the house?”

“Yes,” she confirmed. “And the green bathroom gets gutted and you can put in a nice big shower.”

“But where will we bathe the kids?”

Steve was only joking, but Maria stiffened. He thought he might have pushed things too far. They’d rarely discussed the idea, though Maria knew he wasn’t opposed to it.

“You have to stop hanging around Barton,” she said. “He’s giving you bad ideas. First you want a house, now kids?”

She didn’t sound angry so Steve ventured further.

“So is that a no?” he asked.

It was OK with him if it was. Pregnancy would affect Maria far more than him so Steve had left the decision to her.

“I think we need to get rid of the pink paint and the green bathroom and the mauve bedroom before we can even discuss kids,” she said.

“Well, I’ll get right on that,” he said and pushed her gently off him and stood up.

“You’re going to paint in the nude?” she asked.

“Depends,” he said. “You gonna watch?”

Steve wiggled his eyebrows and Maria laughed and reached out her hand to pull him back down next to her.

“And you say I’m bad,” she admonished.

“Maybe we bring out the worst in each other,” he laughed then nuzzled his face against her neck.

She hummed in pleasure.

“You know, we still haven’t christened the garage,” he whispered in her ear.

“Oh, my, you are so pathetic,” she said. “And you wouldn’t, because you’re a baby when it comes to the cold.”

He looked at her at stuck out his bottom lip in a pout. Maria lifted her head quickly and grabbed it between her teeth. Soon both she and Steve were warm enough that they wouldn’t have noticed the cold in the garage at all.

Finally, Steve spooned up against her and pulled the blanket over them.

“Convenient there were these blankets here in a vacant house,” she said.

“Yeah, imagine that,” he chuckled.

She pressed her back against him and he kissed her shoulder.

Her breathing started to become regular as she began to drift off to sleep.

“I love you, Captain Rogers,” she mumbled.

Steve smiled. There were no words he loved to hear her say more than those.

“I love you, too, Mrs. Rogers.”


End file.
